POEM - Tears must be counted one by one

Tears are often swallowed,

but those allowed form,

        (in the moment as if in a deep pool)

a whirlpool of imagined endless grief.

A solid mass of suffering

is only broken apart

when each one is raised up to the light

and held in soft hands to measure its weight.

There is no elevator,

only steps to trudge out of the weighty dark,

no measuring in teacups,

the sorrow of the first as heavy as the last,

for they are not kin

	but estranged cousins

	treading a familiar worn path.

To grieve the sinking hulk as a bulk

is not to grieve at all,

for each to each,

one to another,

signals the same patience asked

to stop and count.

So count.

Let each wash clean the memory,

the exactness of the loss,

the specific name of it,

the day it happened,

     (as the light danced across the room)

the focus of the pain,

the stab of the denial,

the crumbling of a world once thought

	to have no end

	amen.

Time crawls with each tic,

but only when it comes across,

	(as a warm blanket after the chill of deep remembrance)

to not push in to end whatever must be felt,

but only creep through an open door

until the space is clean

	with fragrance of flowers

	and hugging hoops of steel.

Iris,

     (wide open after darkness)

learns to see again in the bright blossoming

	of another day,

the way a linen curtain billows the smooth and soft wind

across a once darkened brow.

—Oaxaca 033026